Ghost Ariel

Ariel in Ghost form. Ariel was the Balance Guardian in Nosgoth. The Guardians govern the Pillars, which regulate the energies of the land. Ariel was murdered by the dark forces bent on overthrowing the Pillars. Upon her death, her beloved, the Guardian of the Mind, Nupraptor, found her corpse. His madness and paranoia at seeing her death overflowed and insidiously infected all other Guardians and their corruption carried over into the Pillars. Her soul, on her way to be released from the Pillars, was then trapped due to their corruption. She forever more is bound to the Balance Pillar, until the Pillars can be restored.

This is the basis for Ariel, her story. From Blood Omen 1, through the Soul Reaver games, she was seen in a similar form. Last presumably as she viewed her own body, perhaps wrapped by her beloved Nupraptor in burial wraps and with the veritable loss of balance in Nosgoth worn on her very face, as half of her face is ruined to reflect this. When I originally made Ariel, over a decade ago now, Daniel Cabuco’s amazing concept portrait was the basis for her overall face proportions and I looked to her voice actress, Anna Gunn, for the finer details and sort of create a balance between them. The goal to bring forth from those sources that feeling of a mature, yet timeless beauty, much like Cate Blanchett as Galadriel in Lord of the Rings. I originally came up with a reason for why her face is ruined to the skull on the one side which helped me in sculpting those details and feeling out her character. It can have a logical explanation to it, if you watch the cinematic in Blood Omen where she is killed, or it can be that her one side is rotted for symbolic purposes. I leave that to fans to make of it their own!

This unifies the look of her as she was just last seen in SR2, as this is a direct sequel to that game. As with the overall philosophy of these remasters, keeping the characters consistent aims to unify, as much as can be, the overall series together. When you go from one game to the next, it should feel more like you’re continuing a new chapter in this epic tale. As with all of the characters, she has been modified to fit the Defiance skeleton and to the animations of the game. Slight proportional changes then occur, but the fidelity and look is kept intact as close as possible and it gives her face a unique look from what I did those years ago. It’s amazing the level of detail that we’ve been able to bring forth and preserve in this remaster!